Blossom Toes: We Are Ever So Clean (1967)

When ticking through the list of great albums from the heyday of late 60s British psychedelia--Sgt. Pepper, Piper at the Gates, SF Sorrow, Ogdens' Nut, etc.--the debut album from Blossom Toes is, shall we say, typically omitted. At most, a stray track will make it onto the standard anthology of the era. Which is a shame, because it's a pretty damn cool record. Very British and eccentric, mixing the quainter side of UK psyche with a Zappa-like strain of weirdness, yet loads of fun for fans of the genre.

Opener "Look At Me I'm You" is as fine a representative of the era as any, the usual bag of tricks (strange sounding guitars, headphone-friendly stereo sonics) heightened by a piercing sense of strangeness. Tracks like the superb "I'll Be Late For Tea" are densely-packed and baroque, full-on Sgt. Pepper musical adventurism, while they push the trippy whimsy to the max in tunes like "The Remarkable Saga of the Frozen Dog," every bit as hopelessly nuts as the title would suggest.

The band only stuck around for one more album, 1969's If Only For A Moment, which, like a lot of their peers, saw them moving into the harder-rocking territory of Cream with strains of early prog; less goofball fun than the debut, but not a bad record at all.

Here's an audio rip of "Look At Me I'm You":

...and an audio rip of "Telegram Tuesday":

How about a live performance of "Frozen Dog" (second song in a 2-song clip)? Good lord.